Friday, February 20, 2009

Flaming Egos, or "What the Hell?"

I don't understand egos. I really don't. Some people can only make their lives meaningful by putting other people down, and even though I see it regularly enough to know it happens, it always surprises me just how stupid and petty people can be.

Some people, if they've decided you are Full of Fail, will never ever admit you aren't. Not if you throw the whole book of achievements at them. Not even if you have achievements they haven't accomplished yet. Not if your gear is better, not if your friends are cooler, not if you get official sanctions from God Himself for being L33T.

The Contestants

My guildmate is a raiding warrior who hasn't done all of the 5-man heroics yet but who is a sensible, nice guy with a respectable work ethic. He tanked Heroic Azjol-Nerub with this DK as dps.

I'm not going to link to my guildmate for gear comparisons, but I can report (after checking his armory) that he's a warrior in all blues and purples, every piece that can be gemmed and enchanted is (head, shoulders, back, chest, bracers, weapon, shield, hands, legs, feet), with a focus on stamina, dodge, and defense.

The DK's shoulders are unsocketed, unenchanted PVP gear (Savage Gladiator), though other gemmable pieces are gemmed and his feet, legs, hands, and head have enchants (his sword is runed).

Here are my guildmate's tanking stats at the time of this story (click to view larger):


Here are the DK's dps stats (click to view larger, I have no clue which panel is relevant, so you get them all):


As of this post, my guildmate has 10 Wrath normal raid achievements to the other guy's 8. My guildmate has 4 Wrath heroic raid achievements to the DK's 1.

My guildmate has blacksmithing and mining (plus all three secondary professions), and the DK has NO professions at the time of this post except for the secondary profession First Aid.

I do not know whose gear is better or whose stats are better. All I know is that I've been reading (for fun as a former recruiter and guild structure blogger) what hardcore raiding guilds look for in an applicant, and fully gemmed and enchanted gear is a HUGE factor.

The Failbag

My guildmate, we'll call him Warrior, is having an off day. The pick-up-group he's with wants to do the Azjol-Nerub achievements, which a 5-man group of some of our guild's best raiders wiped on countless times -- guys who are not scrubs (guys that other guilds try to poach from us).

Now, I don't know anything about Azjol-Nerub or its achievements other than what people tell me. So I'm not going to say "Oh, it's impossible" or "Oh, people are lame if they can't do it." All I know is, players I know to be very competent (and persistent) have failed to do them so far.

Warrior's group keeps wiping. Warrior has never done Azjol-Nerub on heroic before, and he knows he's not giving his best game because he's still learning the encounter, plus the added difficulty of trying to work the achievement in. But he's game, and he keeps going back and throwing himself at the challenge.

Warrior explains at this point in his story that DPS keeps pulling aggro: "Not much of an excuse, was just having a bad time of it for some reason. It happens."

So they give up on the achievement and do it the normal way with a few minor hiccups.

Apparently, this entire time, the DK has been talking trash to Warrior and finds a line of attack he likes: insisting Warrior bought his account on eBay. Warrior has "had about enough of his meaningless taunting, and very respectfully stated so, left group, and hearthed."

"Afterwards, he sends me a tell again, 'you never answered me if you were an ebay warrior' and I, once again as respectfully as possible, explain that I had just never done that instance before and was having a hard time especially getting flustered and sloppy after being told what a terribad tank I was. Of course I knew better than to believe that I'm the worst tank to grace the server. I linked a couple of achievements and in particular he scoffed 'Sapph and KT? What, were you carried or something?' and I said 'No, I main tanked Saphh and picked up adds on KT.'

We both were pretty insistent of our opinions, mine that I am far better a tank than that run happened to imply, and his that I was a waste of space and should /wowquit."

The Contest

Warrior offers DK a challenge. They'll do another heroic, Warrior pays repair costs for all wipes. If they don't get through in a reasonable amount of time, DK gets "several hundred gold in auctionable goods."

If they do get through reasonably, and Warrior proves he's not the worst tank on the server, the DK must "apologize, say that I was not a fail tank, and leave it at that."

DK brings in a group of guildies and insists on another heroic Warrior hasn't done before, explaining, "No, [Gundrak] doesn't prove anything other than you can repeat the same thing over and over like a robot. If you were really skilled you could do something new without any trouble." They pick Halls of Light. Warrior sighs and figures he'll just be on top of his game and it'll "make revenge that much sweeter."

The warlock in the group is doing something else, so they four-man through the first boss.

Once, the healer gets knocked across the room, causing a wipe that Warrior gets blamed for.

The DK keeps proximity pulling mobs with the excuse that Warrior isn't fast enough.

The DK refuses to get on the skull target and so keeps pulling aggro and dying, then blames Warrior for it. His excuse is "You've never been here before, I have. I know what the kill priority should be on the mobs. I was just killing what's SUPPOSED to die first."

They wipe a few times on the last boss, Warrior is always the last alive, and when the boss finally goes down, Warrior finds himself with 3 shiny new conditional achievements in addition to the achievement for completing HoL on Heroic.

DK starts the final conversation with "I guess that was a good run by your standards huh?"

Warrior replies with "We made it to the end in a reasonable amount of time, how was it by your standards?" and gets a laundry list of things he did wrong, including all of the things DK did wrong but blamed on Warrior.

"All right, but where's your end of the deal? You owe me an apology."

He doesn't get an apology at all. He does get a grudging "You are not the worst tank I have ever seen......but you are far from the best."

Warrior: "Okay, sure. But there's room to learn. I don't need to be the best as long as I can play and have fun."

DK: "So you settle for mediocrity then? In my guild, that's unacceptable. That says a lot about you and your guild."

And DK's final parting shot: "If I were you I'd do the smart thing and end this conversation and be glad that you got you and your guild taken off the blacklist."

Granted, I didn't have screenshots to reconstruct the conversation, just my guildmate's quotes from memory. But, really, that's not the kind of stuff you get wrong. Plus, my guildmate is a respectful person, he recounted the story in a factual tone, included his own personal mistakes, did not at any point rant and rave, and I trust (with my instincts as a writer and English major, as someone who spent college and her entire recruitment position looking for bias and deeper meanings in other people's writing) that he stayed true to what happened.

My Response

*stare*

*blink*

*stare*

*blink blink*


Yes, Tëmpus. They're talking about you.

16 comments:

  1. Well. That guy wins the asshat award of the century. Frankly, if I were in Warrior's place, I would have booted the DK from the group and gone on to find somebody who knew what they heck they were doing. But that's me, and I don't have the patience of your Warrior.

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  2. wow . . . just wow.

    I could not bring myself to entertain that kind of abuse. DK would be on my /whothehellcareswhatyouthink list from the moment he started accusing me of buying an account on eBay.

    GIDT ftw. Absolutely.

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  3. great post my dear. especially ending it w/ the classic pa comic. well done!

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  4. Wow...

    just..

    Wow.

    I cannot post my response. There are obscenities that I have had to invent after reading this to describe my rage at this fellow.

    The response is Not Safe For Anything.

    *facepalm*

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  5. Warrior is a good tank. Still learning some of the finer points of Main Tanking the tougher raid encounters, but certainly no scrub -- not even near the "scrub" end of the spectrum. Anyone who can pick up 3 adds + Kel'thuzad to finish out the fight when a mishap kills the MT is pro in my book. Mr. DK, however, wouldn't last 5 minutes in a raid group that knew what was up. You don't Death Grip the boss and then blame the tank that you died. Also, slightly amused that you posted the DK-Fail's name at the end. :P

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  6. I think my first time running with Warrior was in Naxx25's Spider Wing. We were on the boss with Widow's Embrace. It was our first attempt at using MC because our first Naxx25 attempt as a guild. The SPriest was having trouble with range and we ended up getting the achievement on accident for killing the boss w/o dispelling her enrage! Everyone did a great job, but Warrior stepped it up by jumping in when the other tanks died and even getting Battle Rez'd to replace it the next time the MT died, lol.

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  7. People like that aren't worth the bother. Your Warrior tank was in the wrong here too by goading the DK into a dungeon contest when said DK was evidently:

    1) A total noob.
    2) Lacking a threat monitoring add-on.
    3) Attacking mobs in the wrong order.

    In addition your Warrior may be a brilliant tank but if he didn't know the encounters on heroic he should have gone with a friendly PuG or a guild group first, because arseholes like Tempus just spoil the game. I find the fact that the DK brought in guildies thereby outnumbering the tank to be interesting. If say they had PuG'ed me and I had been the healer I would have told the DK to GTFO and told the tank to take his time if heroic mode was new to him and NO we would not have pursued achievements on his first run.

    In defence of your Warrior however, I have healed and tanked Halls of Lightning on Normal and Heroic as a Paladin.

    A Paladin has various abilities to keep AoE aggro on mobs so this DK's attempts to disturb aggro wouldn't have been an issue. Warriors however are currently the worst in-game concerning AoE tanking so it would have been relatively easy for this total nooblet DK to pull aggro off your friend. Any DPS class could have done it. If im a DPS class and I target X before Skull with a Warrior or even Druid tank, there's a high chance im going to pull it off said tank or atleast gain a dangerous amount of threat. It's do-able with any class of tank if they potentially don't gain enough threat on additional adds.

    I don't know if you wish to add it into the post but I find it interesting that the DK is currently tanking specc'ed now. I find people who play tanks in general, myself included, tend to be leaders or control freaks. The leader category of tanks is fantastic and I believe I am in that category when I tank or heal. Control freaks however seriously stunt a group with the pressure they apply and the egotistical attitude they bring to the group. This Tempus is indeed one of these control freaks and a wannabe DK tank.

    (Note on the armoury he is currently 5 points underneath being heroic mode defence critable and 10 points under raid boss critable. 500 gold says he's gone into heroics to tank without being defence capped - any takers? :D)

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  8. Most people would have put DK on ignore right away, but I respect Warrior for standing up for himself and satisfying his own sense of justice by humiliating DK.

    To some of the comments made by our guildies, Warrior replied:

    "Did I have to put up with his crap? No. Did I have to prove myself? No. Did I have to save myself and the guild from the blacklist of a petty three-ring-circus guild? Probably not. But I did. And did it feel good after I won the 'impossible' bet? Lol, more than you will ever know."

    I'm proud of him. And it makes a great story. :)

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  9. Hey all, this is Warrior. Thanks for your supporting comments! Each time someone comes along and says "What a douchebag!" "What a dickwad!" "What a noob!" is a personal pat on the back for me. What Birdfall posted right above was straight out of my mouth -- I know a lot of people will say "well, you shouldn't have wasted your time in the first place."

    ...true, a lot of people just don't have the patience. I do, however, and I not only had the patience for it, I had the tenacity to stand up and say "hey, you're wrong. I'll bet you I'm right."

    I'm not one to stand by and let someone say things about me that are absolutely not true. "But he's a noob and doesn't know what he's talking about, why do you even care?" Simple -- it's not that I cared what he thought, it's that I knew that, despite his uppity arrogance, I could prove him wrong.

    Any day you can cheat an arrogant noob out of a few hundred gold that he thought he couldn't lose is a good day indeed.

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  10. /cuddle

    Something one of our guild's other women said, which I fully support:

    "you didn't need to prove yourself to that idiot. It's totally awesome that you did, though!"

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  11. I approve of Warrior. He's Epic in my book.

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  12. Sorry, not a response to this post, remind me and I will come and respond properly. There has been a movement across wow blogs to show your 6th screenshot: http://anticsinazeroth.visser.com.au/blog/ive-been-tagged/

    To perpetuate it, post about your screenshot!

    Please forgive the blatant non comment :(

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  13. I highly approve of your last comment there Cody (Warrior). Who needs eternals and ore farming, I'll just go find me an arrogant noob ! :D

    We should all do it. I mean come on, in my experience theres plenty of them around >_>

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  14. @Ivoire - Non-comments are always welcome. :) I'm not sure if I'll participate in the movement -- on the one hand, I like screenshots and might be able to find (at the very least) the sixth I posted on this blog. On the other hand, I'm VERY lazy and will probably get around to it too late to actually be considered "part." So we'll see.

    I'll check out your blog soon. Only had time for the sixth screenshot post before I had to be in-game for the fishing tourney.

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  15. Just because I'm proud and someone might come back and read this:

    My family group got the guild first on that impossible achievement. Read post.

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  16. I've heard from several different bloggers or blog commentors essentially what Jiriki said":

    "A Paladin has various abilities to keep AoE aggro on mobs so this DK's attempts to disturb aggro wouldn't have been an issue. Warriors however are currently the worst in-game concerning AoE tanking so it would have been relatively easy for this total nooblet DK to pull aggro off your friend. Any DPS class could have done it. If im a DPS class and I target X before Skull with a Warrior or even Druid tank, there's a high chance im going to pull it off said tank or atleast gain a dangerous amount of threat. It's do-able with any class of tank if they potentially don't gain enough threat on additional adds."

    I'm not flaming Jiriki. Within the quote is the qualification that it could happen to any tank with sub-optimal threat. I'm just putting forth my warrior love and class-centric point of view.

    I don't care what class you play, if a failknight deathgrips a mob, you just lost aggro. It's a built in feature of that ability.

    So many of them do it. It's too bad this one had to be such a dillhole about it. I would have either /ignored or approached it in a less mature manner.

    So props to Mr. Warrior. The number one sign of a true tank is standing up for himself and his friends - even if (or maybe especially if) it puts him in a tough and uncomfortable spot.

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